"Early in the game I thought it was going to be a good game for him. He looked sharp, his pitch count was down." -- Brad Ausmus

DETROIT – Anibal Sanchez isn't the most heralded pitcher on a Detroit Tigers' staff that includes Cy Young Award winners and All-Stars, but he has been exceptionally consistent since joining the club.

That's why Saturday's outing was bizarre.

Sanchez pitched 4 1/3 innings of hitless ball before coming unglued, allowing three runs in the fifth and four in the sixth, losing to the Tampa Bay Rays 7-2 at Comerica Park.

It was a game in which Sanchez had a slim margin of error because Chris Archer was strong over 8 1/3 innings, scattering six hits.

Sanchez (5-3) allowed seven earned runs (in 5 2/3 innings), snapping a streak of 32 consecutive starts without allowing more than four earned runs, which dated back to June 4, 2013. It was the fourth-longest such streak in franchise history.

"Early in the game I thought it was going to be a good game for him," Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said. "He looked sharp, his pitch count was down."

Ausmus said the turning point came on Ryan Hanigan's at-bat in the fifth, when he fouled off several pitches before walking. Logan Forsythe homered in the previous at-bat to open the scoring.

"I don't know when everything changed, when everything slowed down," Sanchez said. "I know we had a really good game plan and I just tried to put it in from the beginning.

"I got really good four innings and after the homer and walk I think everything changed right there. My ball started being up in the strike zone, no more down, that's why Tampa takes advantage of the pitch in the high zone."

The Rays loaded the bases against Sanchez in the sixth before scoring runs on Brandon Guyer's sacrifice fly and Forsythe's base hit. Sanchez was pulled right before Kevin Kiermaier hit his second triple of the game, off Phil Coke, plating two more runs to make it 7-0.

"A lot of situations I get ahead in the count, like 0-2, and then I'm not able to finish the guy," Sanchez said. "They took me like, three, four, five pitches after that and got like 10 pitches for every at-bat. It made me a little bit tired. I need to work on finish the hitter early in the count."

The game snapped Sanchez's run of five consecutive decisions without a loss, dating back to April 21.

Meanwhile, Archer (5-5) showed why he entered the game with the second-best earned-run average in the American League since May 16 (behind Seattle's Felix Hernandez). His only blemishes were solo home runs by Alex Avila in the seventh and J.D. Martinez in the ninth.

"He has poise on the mound for a young guy and an explosive fastball; had the two-seamers in and out, good slider," the Tigers' Torii Hunter said. "He's definitely one of the best young pitchers in the game."

Archer allowed six hits over 8 1/3 innings.

"He made a lot of good pitches," Martinez said. "I feel like he didn't have many pitches over the plate, at least to me. Everything was corners in, away, up and in, down and away, down and in. Anytime you have a guy throwing 96 (miles per hour) that has good movement doing that, it's going to be tough."

The Tigers (48-36) have lost back-to-back games for the first time since dropping three in a row from June 16-18.

Hunter chalked up his team's struggles at the plate the past two games to good pitching.